Strings
by SamCyberCat
Summary: Silence does not bring Clive to a place where he can reflect upon his life quite as well as music does.


**Notes:** Written as my half of a trade with Meirii, who wanted a fic about Clive, violins and musings of before & during the events of PL3. Set sometime after Lost Future, with heavy spoilers for that game and some Eternal Diva spoilers.

* * *

Clive swallowed the feelings of self-consciousness as he stood in the middle of the room. He doesn't find doing so particularly hard, given that acting had become a large part of his life up until now. Not that he was particularly brilliant at it, but he'd been... passable.

Passable enough to fool Dimitri into thinking that he didn't hate him and also to be able to fool Layton into thinking he might have been "Future Luke" for a little while.

The trick to ignoring the nerves is simply not to think about them and get on. Because as soon as you hesitate, they've got you.

Having said that, there's still something not too pleasant about holding a violin in a way that is most probably not the right way, while being watched by someone who not only does know the right way, but is perfectly aware that you're holding it wrong. He averted his gaze down towards the instrument, because it was easier than making eye-contact.

When was the last time he'd played the violin?

It had been when Constance was alive. He played because it made her happy, regardless of how good he was at it.

As he struck the first note, his mind shifted back to her. It might have only been five short years that they'd lived together, but those years had been amongst the most influential in Clive's life. Certainly, he'd never have been able to achieve anything that he had done without her and not just because of the funding she had unintentionally provided.

She was a genuinely nice person. One of the few who Clive felt truly deserved the wealth and happiness she had gathered during her life. For the time that she had extended that happiness to Clive, he was grateful. Even if it had indirectly caused him to realise that he was mad.

The vivid images of the fire had been etched in his mind since the day his parents had died. He'd overheard others say that because he was young, he'd probably forget these memories in time, but he did not. Whether they were the true memories of what had happened that day or something his mind had warped into being through the desperate hunger to remember, he did not know. But he did know that all he could think about was that fire and how he'd never known on the morning he'd kissed his parents goodbye that it would be the last time he'd ever see them.

Even surrounded by all the kindness Constance had shown him, Clive could think of nothing else. Therefore he, at such a young age, determined that he must be mad and any decisions he made from then onwards must keep that in mind.

It wasn't until later during his teenage years that Constance's place in society granted him the doorway to what would become his source of knowledge to feed the gaps his memory couldn't provide.

While she was no one more than simply one more wealthy person in the eyes of London, she had gathered many friends because of this. One such friend being Mr Donovan, the current big-name in the London Times newspaper. He was a loud and boisterous man, often the focus of many scandals. But Constance assured Clive that underneath it he was harmless. And through her friendship with Donovan, she managed to secure Clive an apprenticeship working for the London Times.

This suited Clive greatly. He'd never had any desire to go to university, given that academia was as much of a broken system as the rest of England was. An apprenticeship as a reporter gave him a much wider degree of freedom.

And, it turned out, more access to information than he could have ever imagined.

Although Clive had tried to look into the explosion that caused the fire on his own, he had been limited in what was available. The whole event had been suspiciously hushed up and the more Clive read into it, the more his realised why.

Finally, he had someone to blame for what had happened. Bill Hawks, the up-and-coming candidate who was favoured to win the next election, had been a scientist at the Institute of Polydimensional Physics. He was responsible for the explosion. Apparently he'd pushed ahead with an experiment that wasn't ready, in a desire to get more funding for it.

The articles he'd found spoke of another scientist who had commented to say that he didn't feel Hawks's decision to press forward with the project was correct. A man called Dimitri Allen. Apparently the article with his comments had never been published didn't surprise Clive, given the trend he'd come across with these articles.

It didn't take long to research Dimitri and seek him out. It was fortunate for Clive that not only was the man still working as a scientist, but he was still bitter about Bill Hawks. Admittedly, Clive cared little for Dimitri's own tale of loss, but it did work as perfect leverage to convince Dimitri to go along with him. That between the two of them, they might be able to construct an absurd plan to get back at the person who'd caused the ruin in their lives.

But Dimitri wasn't enough. It was frustratingly slow having to tip-toe around him, making him think that all this was being done to help save Claire, a co-worker he'd lost to the explosion and apparently cared for dearly. Because Clive wasn't interested in changing the past. He'd accepted that his parents were gone now and his focus was stopping the dangerous place this country had become. A place where money and power granted you the ability to hide your wrong-doings and continue to hurt others.

Through an unfortunate coincidence, it was money that presented him with the ability to proceed in his own plans. Constance Dove's passing had left him with her wealth, estate and workers. He had little time to mourn for her though, as he was already moving to negotiate with the Family - London's very own gangsters. They were the people Clive needed. The Family would work under him for a price without asking questions.

Everything seemed to be moving much quicker now – the elaborate trap Clive wanted to create was well under way. Future London had seemed like a whimsical idea at first, born from Dimitri's obsession with time travel, but it had been perfect. A way to make people believe they were stuck in the future, so that they would work harder in an attempt to get back to the past. That was the logic behind kidnapping the scientists, more people to work on the time machine. Even if that thing only existed as a reason to distract Dimitri from the truth, it had become more complex lately. It was clear to see that Dimitri poured his obsession into it and this thankfully made him blind to anything else that Clive might have been doing...

...Like constructing a giant mobile fortress.

When he'd first presented the future Layton idea to Dimitri, however, he'd been surprised at how agreeable the scientist had been. It seemed that he knew Layton through some means and simply nodded in agreement that it would be more convenient to have Layton's mind trying to figure out their mysteries than have him running around above ground, risking stumbling across the truth on his own. Layton had an unfortunate knack for getting into affairs that he should keep away from. This was something Clive had learned from the frequent articles featuring him that turned up in the London Times.

So Dimitri agreed and never questioned Clive as to the real reason he wanted Layton there. Which was good, because those were answers that Clive didn't feel he could give. Letting Dimitri fill the blanks with his own presumptions was easier.

The day when they set their plan into motion seemed to come all too quickly.

In truth, Clive hadn't been there at the time machine presentation. He'd had too much else to work on at this stage to make sure everything went smoothly. But from what Dimitri had reported back to him, it seemed that it had all gone well. They now had Prime Minister Bill Hawks within their underground world and Layton was on his way to sniffing his nose into the situation.

His hand was trembling as he wrote the letter to Layton. Kind of like it was now, just thinking about it. The tune he was playing on the violin wobbled, but he soon recovered, just as his hand had done when writing the letter.

He was posing as Luke from ten years in the future, a role that he'd practised playing so much in the approach to this day. It was unlikely that Layton would believe him to be this, but Clive had set up so many events to put his mind at ease. It was just possible that he might pass for "Future Luke". His similar looks were fortunate, as was the fact that he was ten years Luke's senior.

Eventually Layton and Luke did find their way into his trap, though Clive was careful to use Shipley, one of the workers left to him by Constance, to communicate with them to start with. It made sense to give them a feel for future London at first, so that they weren't overwhelmed by it all. Watching them travel around, taking in the beautifully crafted world, was almost intoxicating.

Perhaps he might actually fool Hershel Layton.

That was what had run through his mind as he stepped out to greet the two of them in the casino. What followed was a rush of adrenaline like Clive had never felt before, as under his own instructions, the Family attacked. Layton was even more impressive than Clive could have hoped, swiftly constructing a machine gun out of... out of a slot machine. It would have been impossible to make this up. And Clive couldn't help himself but rush to the Professor's aid. It was almost fun, in the strangest of ways.

In the hours that followed, Clive couldn't stop himself from trying to prolong the time he spent with Layton and Luke. It was dangerous to the plan and he kept having to tear himself away from it, but at the same time, part of him wanted this. He wanted to believe that he was solving this mystery with them, even if he was, in truth, the puppet-master behind it.

Speaking of puppets, Clive also had to confess that Dimitri had done well in his role as the future Layton. Despite the fact that Don Paolo had turned out to be a mistake on Clive's part (he'd unexpectedly sided with Layton...), it didn't stop the real Layton from witnessing that Dimitri was very much a fraud in regards to being the Layton from this time.

It was hard to keep himself from looking at Layton's face following this. The Professor's expression betrayed that he was already starting to piece together that Dimitri might not be the only fake around here. He was dangerously close now. And Clive hoped to be there when he put everything into place.

Which turned out to be a wish that very soon came true. They gathered in the Thames Arms, all the key players in this farce, and Layton reeled off what he had learned.

The sensible part of Clive's mind was impressed. Some of the things he was coming out with, such as Clive's position working for the London Times, were not bits of information he could have found in future London. So it was possible that Layton knew of him even before today. Possible that he remembered all those years ago. Possible that he might not, in fact, have truly been taken in by this act...

All of those thoughts were drowned out, however, in the face of Clive's sharp laughter bubbling to the surface. He'd been holding it back for so long. Lying to everyone for what felt like forever. Not able to be Clive, because acting as someone else was more important. And suddenly the mask had been ripped off and quite abruptly he was Clive again.

Clive who had fooled everyone. Clive who was going to fix the United Kingdom. Clive who, by his own reckoning, was mad.

He barely had time to enjoy the disgusted shock on Dimitri's face at learning he too had been used, before the next part of his plan set into motion. He was running purely on instinct now, grabbing the girl Flora as a hostage, just to make Layton think twice about taking any rash actions.

Then he ran and he rode and he made his way down to his mobile fortress. A safe haven for him that would usher in the new age. The Family members he'd entrusted to be with him at this stage took Flora away to hold her captive, along with the other prisoner on this ride – Bill Hawks. The Prime Minister would get a front row seat in watching the corrupt London he'd helped create get wrecked beneath him.

So Clive took to drive this thing up and into London, internally screaming for Layton to try and stop him.

…

Layton had stopped him.

It had all come crashing down in a whirlwind. Layton had stopped him from destroying London. But he had not been the one to save Clive a second time. No, that had been Claire. The woman who really did travel through time. A blip on Clive's notes, who he had deemed as nothing. She had saved him from death with some of her last living moments.

She had been almost too cruel.

After that, it had all gone silent. He had been arrested, of course. The crimes he'd committed couldn't be counted. It was likely that he would spend the rest of his life imprisoned. Quite frankly, he knew he deserved this.

People had died.

He couldn't justify creating a better society for everyone if innocents were murdered in the process. Those people could have gone on to be just as loving and kind as Constance Dove had been. Perhaps they were already so.

Therefore he had no qualms with being led away to somewhere where he could never harm another person, but instead be left to dwell on his mental state for the rest of his life.

With that, his tune drew to a sad close, just as his story had done.

Suddenly he remembered the man sat at his piano at the end of the room, watching him critically. With some hesitation, Clive lowered the violin.

"You're not fantastic, I'll be honest," droned Oswald Whistler.

"Yes."

That was all Clive needed to say.

Whistler leaned forward thoughtfully; "The music here isn't about being fantastic though, which is fortunate for you. It's an outlet. One that I'm thankful to our wardens for allowing me to provide you all with."

It had been a long journey getting the wardens to agree to Whistler's desire for music lessons to be granted to the inmates, but the results had been fruitful. So many people were here for terrible reasons, but playing music under Whistler's guidance had acted as a release for them.

Today was the first time Whistler had heard Clive play. He'd been nervous after everything he'd heard about him, but he could feel the emotions pouring out into his tune. Even if he wasn't very good.

Given everything, it was unfortunate that Clive did not discover music much earlier in his life. And from the distant look on his face, Whistler felt that these were Clive's thoughts as well.

There was nothing else said as Clive moved to put the violin back into its case. The guards came to remove him almost immediately afterwards, since having him in with another person even for such a short amount of time had to be treated with the highest of security.

"I'll see you here at the same time next week, if you like," Whistler called after them, as they led Clive out. He wasn't sure why he was saying that, because honestly being in this situation made him feel unsettled.

Clive looked back at him as the cell doors were closed behind the guards.

"I'd like that."


End file.
